As someone who's spent the majority of her twenties in Brooklyn, I'm not surprised. Brooklyn is all about bespoke: From cocktails to Etsy-designed invitations and vintage dresses, women in Brooklyn prize their individuality. While Manhattan may have become a borough of identical juice bars and spinning studios, Brooklyn is still known for its indie boutiques, farm-to-table restaurants with charmingly eccentric menu items, and unique body-ink options. And I think that it's precisely that commitment to self-expression that is a Brooklyn woman's downfall—at least when it comes to dating.

According to the survey, women in Brooklyn were the least likely to respond to messages from perspective dates. Of course we were! We know what we want, and we know even from a few sentences when someone isn't it. But unlike the stereotype many hold about our Manhattanite sisters, what we want isn't necessarily the man who pulls in a seven-figure salary or the one whose family has bought him a classic six apartment on the Upper West Side. In fact, on the surface, we appear to be far from superficial: We'll date men who live with six roommates, who don't have a day job, and who may not be able to afford anything beyond a few beers at a sticky-floored dive. But look just a little deeper, and you'll find that we're brimming with the same only-the-best expectations that have led us to live in an ambitious city like New York. Except instead of a certain number on a paycheck or a certain address, we tend to be looking for the men who have similar tastes in books, in music, in cocktails. For us, dating is in the details.

Or at least it is for me. Studies have found that more choice leads to less happiness and more indecision. In one famous study, Sheena Iyengar, PhD, author of The Art of Choosing, found that people were more likely to buy a jar of jam when they only had six choices versus when they had 30 or 40 choices. Replace jam with Jim, or Matt, or Alex (of whom I've dated four in the past decade) and you've pretty much got the modern Brooklyn girl's dating dilemma. There are a million shaggy-haired, single hipsters, so how do you possibly differentiate between them? Because the honest truth? Unlike the women The New York Post quoted in response to the study, who felt like "Brooklyn men don't have enough confidence," or were "lazy" or too cheap to pay for a slice of pizza, most of the guys I dated in Brooklyn were pretty great. And that was exactly the thing that made dating so hard.

One year, I dated four different red-haired intellectual property lawyers, all of whom were matched with me on OkCupid. Clearly, the online algorithm knew more about my type than I did; until I'd begun going out with these men, I'd never really thought of this category as a distinct group onto itself. But once I began matching with them, I became convinced this was my type—and it was my job to find the best of the bunch. But what did the best mean? Was the best one who shared my love of triathlons or one who could indulge me when I wanted to order nachos and wings on a lazy Sunday at the bar? Was he the one who could introduce me to cool indie bands I'd never heard of or one who unashamedly blasted Bon Jovi? The more men I met who almost met my ideal, the more I was convinced that the next guy would be even better. All of a sudden, little things that might have been NBD—the fact he didn't have a passport when I loved to travel, the fact he'd never been camping when I'd spent my college summers as a camp counselor—became deal-breakers. So many men seemed so close to what I imagined for myself that it felt unfair not to hold out.

This attitude meant I spent most of my twenties single. But I didn't mind. After all, most of my friends were in the same boat. We'd spend Sunday mornings dissecting dates over brunch, and occasionally, we'd even make Oprah-inspired vision boards of what we imagined our future boyfriends to be like. A circle of yoga-loving, kombucha-drinking, hippie-influenced friends that I'd made upon my move to Brooklyn from Manhattan had gradually made my sensibility toward life less Sex and the City and more The Secret. I'm not admitting this because I'm proud of the fact, but I am admitting it because I think it speaks to the ingrained belief I'd somehow picked up from living in Brooklyn: That it was possible to conjure up an ideal mate from the ether.

Of course it wasn't. And one by one, my friends began to realize this. One girl started dating a man she made fun of for "kissing like a shark." Three years later, they got married. Others deigned to look outside their Brooklyn area zip codes. And others stopped trying, allowing their online dating profiles to expire and finding love among their friends or coworkers or others they'd never imagined as their type. By closing off their options, they were actually finding love.

As for me, I'm still figuring it out. For one, I've stopped focusing so much on whether or not all our interests line up exactly. Instead, I'm paying more attention to whether or not I like the guy in my life—and, frankly, in my bed—right now. I've also stopped dating the string of lawyers, which helps me focus on the men I date as individuals. But I'm still making the vision boards. And I've added one more thing to the list: I'm hoping the man I meet as my future partner is as quirky and choosy about relationships—as Brooklyn—as I am.